Working as a Freelance Careers Consultant

Please note that as of 14 November 2022 we have suspended the recruitment of freelance careers consultants due to limited amount of work we are able to share with colleagues on our Freelance Register at this time. We may reopen applications in the future but in the meantime consider applying for our permanent and fixed term vacancies on an employment basis. Please see the University of London jobs board or The Careers Group LinkedIn page for our job openings.

What you will be doing

The bulk of the work that we get our freelance careers consultants to do is delivering one-to-one appointments with students. In most cases these will be central appointments within the careers office which are open to students from any discipline at any stage in their course including graduates and postgraduate researchers.

There will often be a mix of shorter ‘quick queries’ of around 10 to 20 minutes and longer appointments anywhere between 20 minutes to one hour.

Some of our larger services have application advisers who deal with application advice, so careers consultants focus more on career choice, career planning and job hunting. However, in our smaller services, our freelancers will probably end up covering everything.

We also use freelancers to cover delivery of core workshops on a range of career management issues where they have the teaching and facilitation skills needed. We keep a record of freelancers who are willing to offer this kind of cover.

In some cases, we may need cover for activities in specific departments or working with particular groups of students (e.g PhDs). For this work we may ask for specific knowledge or experience. Freelancers may also contribute to other activities as part of their assignment, such as writing content or assisting with other operational aspects of the service as appropriate.

How it works 

Opportunities can arise at any of our member services.

Each request for cover sent to our pool of freelancers will contain details of the location, the days requested, the payment rate and any special requirements. If you want to take the work, you can choose to offer some or all of the requested days. Once we have received all offers and confirmed with the member services, we will then send you a formal contract for the assignment.

You are free to take up other work alongside your freelance work for The Careers Group as long as it doesn’t present a conflict of interest.

What we need from you

We expect our freelancers to be comfortable with the full range and complexity of careers issues for higher education students and to work largely unsupervised. Because of this we look for people with substantial recent experience working as careers consultants within higher education. Within this we are keen to see evidence of working with a wide range of clients and dealing with the full range of careers and employability topics.

A relevant qualification in career guidance/coaching and evidence of ongoing professional development is desirable.

The currently recognised qualifications are: 

• PGDip CEIGHE (Post-Graduate Diploma in Careers Education, Information and Guidance in Higher Education)
• Postgraduate Diploma in Careers Coaching by University of East London
• QCG (Qualification in Careers Guidance)
• Dip CG (Diploma in Careers Guidance)
• Cert CEIG HE (Certificate in Careers Education, Information and Guidance in Higher Education)
• Dip CEIG HE (Diploma in Careers Education, Information and Guidance in Higher Education)
• MA in Careers Guidance in Higher Education
• S/NVQ Level 4 in Advice and Guidance
• MSc Career Management and Counselling

Because our institutions also vary in the courses they offer and the range of students they attract, it is important that our freelancers are able to deal comfortably and flexibly with a vast range of clients and career management issues, and can quickly adapt to working within different systems in a variety of settings.
 

If you are interested

Please send a copy of your CV providing evidence of your suitability to freelance@careers.lon.ac.uk.

If appropriate we will invite you to a telephone interview and/or a face-to-face interview to assess your suitability.